‘Oh, it’s you. Just passing, I suppose?’
Quint stood at the door of the cottage. Lila had heard his motorbike approach and wasn’t surprised to see him. In fact she was ready for him.
‘Yeah,’ he said, slightly taken aback at the welcome. From his expression it looked like he had expected something warmer. ‘Can I come in?’
Lila stepped back to allow him to enter. She managed to make the gesture seem so offhand he hesitated, not sure whether he actually was welcome or not. That had been her plan. He followed her into the living room.
‘On your own?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, sitting down on the sofa. The TV was on. She was watching Pointless. It was nearing its climax. The couple had opted for the category of American Crime Writers. She made no attempt to mute it or turn it off. Nor did she offer him anything to drink or eat.
‘No Pearl?’
‘At work.’
Undeterred he sat down in the armchair. ‘Everything OK?’
She shrugged. ‘Yeah. No problems.’
‘How’s Tom? Have you seen him?’
He’s persistent, Lila thought. And he hasn’t lost his temper yet. If I’d turned up to someone’s house and they treated me like this, she thought, I’d have left by now. Or at least let them know how I felt.
‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘Went in the other day.’
‘How is he?’
She thought. This answer required some emotion. Or should have done. But she didn’t want to give anything away to him.
‘Well as can be expected, I suppose. We talked about you.’
Something passed over his face. Lila pretended not to be watching him, keeping her eyes on the TV, but she was studying him. She tried to catch what the emotion might have been. Fear? Apprehension? Something like that. Nothing positive.
‘Jesus,’ said Quint, trying to make a joke of it, ‘you must have been short of conversation pieces.’
‘No, we chatted for quite a bit.’ Lila turned her attention away from the TV towards him. ‘He told us some stories about when you two used to be together. Back in the army, was it?’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ said Quint, smiling. ‘Plenty of stories about that.’ The smile seemed superficial. Cracked ice on a barely frozen lake waiting for the slightest weight to break it.
‘Iraq, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
Lila turned away from him, back to the TV. She didn’t think this couple were going to win. They had chosen the wrong category.
Lila seemed to be about to pursue the subject but Quint jumped in, changed it. ‘Did he say anything else?’
‘Such as?’
‘How he’s coping, when he’s coming out, that kind of thing.’
Lila’s smile was as fake as Quint’s. ‘He’s all right, I think. You know what prisons are like these days. Holiday camps, aren’t they?’ She forced a laugh for his benefit. ‘Probably having a better time in there than he would be out here.’
Quint nodded in agreement even though it was clear he didn’t go along with her assessment.
Lila kept watching the screen. The couple failed to win anything. They were given commiserations and that was that. The credits rolled.
‘Bad luck,’ said Lila, pointing at the TV. ‘You get all excited watching something, invested in it, and it ends like that. Nothing. Hardly fair. Although I suppose fairness has got nothing to do with it, really, has it?’
‘Not really,’ said Quint, unsure where the conversation was headed.
Lila stared ahead at the TV, not really seeing it, but trying not to see Quint either.
‘Yeah well, if you’re OK then I’d better be off.’ He stood up as if he was suddenly in a hurry to be out of there.
Lila didn’t move. Didn’t look at him. If she was surprised at his abrupt exit she tried not to let it show. ‘You know your way out, don’t you? Should know your way around by now. I’m going to watch the news.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, although it seemed like he wanted to say a lot more. Lila kept her head angled away from him, feigning interest in the TV. She missed his look of angry exasperation as he left the room.
Lila didn’t move, didn’t dare breathe until she heard the front door closing, the motorbike revving away. She waited a few seconds, just to be sure. Then her expression changed. ‘You can come in now.’
Pearl entered the room.
‘Did you hear all that?’
Pearl nodded.
‘What d’you think?’
‘About what in particular, Iraq?’
‘Yeah.’
Pearl shrugged, spoke like she was trying to convince herself. ‘Well they might have been in Iraq together. I mean, Tom never said that they weren’t. When was Iraq? After Afghanistan or the same time?’
Lila shook her head. ‘Tom said Afghanistan.’
‘Maybe they were in Iraq as well.’
‘Then why didn’t Tom mention that? He said Afghanistan.’ Lila thought. ‘Tom wasn’t in Iraq . . .’
‘But what does he want with us then? How does he really know Tom?’ Pearl asked, then a sudden thought, ‘He’s been in this house. He knows who we are, what we look like, where we go, he’s been round the house, he knows how to get at us . . .’
‘I know,’ said Lila, louder than she had expected, Pearl’s fear contaminating her like an airborne virus.
Pearl stopped speaking. ‘What are we going to do?’ Almost a whisper.
‘I don’t know.’
And as she spoke, the carapace she had presented to Quint began to crumble.
‘I really don’t know . . .’